Parks: 10% of Broadband Homes Bought Streaming Media Device in 2014

Pioneer Roku leads Google Chromecast and Apple TV in unit sales

About one-in-10 broadband homes in the United States bought a streaming media device through the first nine months of the year, according to new data from Parks Associates.

Dallas-based Parks said Roku is still the leading brand with 29% of sales, Google Chromecast (20%) supplanting Apple TV (17%) in second place. New entrant Amazon Fire TV is in fourth place with 10%.

With Showtime, HBO and Sony planning to launch OTT video services next year to compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and Hulu Plus, the demand for streaming devices is projected to mushroom.

“Nearly 50% of video content that U.S. consumers watch on a TV set is non-linear, up from 38% in 2010, and it is already the majority for people 18-44,” Barbara Kraus, director of research at Parks, said in a statement. “The market is changing rapidly to account for these new digital media habits. Roku now offers a streaming stick, and Amazon’s Fire TV streaming stick leaves Apple as the only top player without a stick product in the streaming media device category.”

Indeed, Roku in September announced it had sold 10 million streaming players domestically since 2008, when it became the first CE manufacturer to link the TV with the Internet (sans laptop) via a branded Netflix player.

The Roku device offers access to more than 1,000 third-party content channels — most requiring a separate subscription or authentication. The Saratoga, Calif.-based company said more than 5 billion hours of content have been streamed since 2008 — which it said is akin to watching the movie Avatar more than 1.8 billion times.